Convert your film camera to digital!

I'm guessing many of us have old cameras that shot film but we're either lazy or just love our old bodies and wish we could use them again. Well, if James Jackson has anything to do with it, you'll soon be able to re-use those old bodies and shoot digitally with them!

Digipod on Indiegogo

For James Jackson, a 58-year-old professional photographer, a traditional SLR camera represents an almost bygone era of photography. And with the rapid disappearance of 35mm film developers, it seems these relics might soon become extinct. Jackson is attempting to save the camera of his youth with his “DigiPod” campaign on Indiegogo, which is raising funds for the creation of a digital film pod to replace analog film and thus keep the cameras in use.

As a 58 year old ex-professional photographer I have for years been looking at a number of old analogue or as I call them wet film (refers to the developing process) SLR camera bodies that I used as a young professional, all of which are precision mechanical instruments, they all hold great memories and have taken some great images.

Some are completely mechanical others have batteries to power meters, there are Nikons, Canons and a couple of Leicas’, in my eyes they are all works of art and I have taken some wonderful images with them, but they have not taken pictures for a number of years and that’s a sin.

So for the last five years been looking for a way to make a digital film pod to replace the 35mm film for these cameras, there has been a number of prototypes and a very steep learning curve for me.

I wanted the Digipod to be as versatile as possible in the space available, so there is no hard memory, everything is saved to a micro sd card, plus it has a mini USB for direct connection to a computer and a built in battery.

These are the images taken in the video, the camera is the Minolta 35mmSLR with a AF zoom 35-70mm 1:3.5(22)-45. As you saw each image is focused on different parts of the image.

Because the sensor used in the prototype is 1/2.5 it only captures part of the image in the Minolta's viewfinder, in the production models the sensor will capture more than 20 times the area shown here.

Digipod Continued

DigiPod is going nowhere unless we get 1000 backers, thats the trigger point. From there its all systems go, so if you do want DigiPod to go to production once you have backed Digipod make sure you tell all of your friends about it.

The DigiPod for your old SLR and the size of sensor it has is reliant on how many people commit to having one so the more that know about the DigiPod the better DigiPod gets.

We have added some limited edition colours for the first 250 backers and a second round of not so limited for the next 750 backers.

Now for the technical bit, the sensor we have budgeted for in the costs at the trigger of 1000 sponsors is the 2/3, that gives an 8.8 x 6.6 millimetre image capture area, we will be supplying a mirror and view finder mask within the packages to match the sensor in the DigiPod.

But as we all know, order quantity dictates cost of raw materails, so we have some added some stretch goals, which if we achieve will see all backers being upgraded to a larger sensor than the one we budgeted for at our minimum backer activation of 1000 units.

* 2000 backers will allow us to upgrade the Cmos sensor to a 1” that’s 12.8 to 9.6 millimetre.

* 5000 backers will see the digiPod use a 4/3rds which is 18.0 x 13.5 millimetre.

The DigiPod will be delivered with instructions and links to video tutorials to assist those that may feel they need assistance to set up their old cameras.

It will also have an out of camera cover to protect the sensor when not in use or when charging the pod for use.